We used Ixia's IxChariot (www.ixiacom.com) software to evaluate the throughput performance of the four access points in this story. Two IBM ThinkPad T40 laptops were configured as mobile IxChariot endpoints. We chose Microsoft Windows XP Professional as the OS and used the native drivers supplied by each tested product's manufacturer. Our test laptops were placed on a motorized turntable spinning at approximately 20 rpm to minimize performance differences caused by variations in the position and direction of each wireless PC Card's antenna. Two Dell Dimension 4100s running Windows 2000 composed our stationary endpoints.

All products were tested twiceor more for those showing unstable performanceat 1 foot, 60 feet, 120 feet, and 160 feet. We focused our tests on the throughput of the products in standard and Wi-Ficompliant 802.11g-only and 802.11a/g (mixed) modes. Each access point was tested with the respective manufacturer's client cards. To determine the maximum speed of the chipset, we configured an open network with auto-fallback for the wireless connection rate. We generally left all fine-tunable settings at the manufacturers' defaults and set the radio output to maximum, if such a setting was available.

For all 802.11g-only tests, we paired each laptop with a stationary endpointone running upstream data and the other running downstream data. This configuration let us detect asynchronous speeds caused by driver or chipset design. The 802.11a/g tests were configured similarly, but with one stationary endpoint running upstream and downstream data to the 802.11g radios, while the other endpoint ran upstream and downstream data to the 802.11a radios.

Findings

Our performance tests showed that 802.11a provides reliable coverage to about 100 feet in our test environment. The Cisco Aironet 1200 Series showed 13.4 Mbps of combined "a" and "g" throughput at 100 feeta good score. The 3Com 8750 delivered 19.3 Mbps at 90 feet but did not make it to 100 feet.

The 802.11g standalone tests show the range advantages of the 2.4-GHz band. All four access points received a signal out to 120 feet, and the Cisco and Gateway products even squeaked out to the edge of our test bed160 feetthough with throughput of just under 1 Mbps for both.

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